William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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vision.
"Do you mean to ask it now?"
"Yes."
"And have you wished to ask it ever since you first saw me?"
He tried to say that he had, but he could not; he could only say, "I wish to ask it now more than ever."
She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure how you want me to answer you."
"Not sure?"
"No. I'm afraid I might disappoint you again."
He could not make out whether she was laughing at him. He sat, not knowing what to say, and he blurted out, "Do you mean that you won't?"
"I shouldn't want you to make another mistake."
"I don't know what you"—he was going to say "mean," but he substituted—"wish. If you wish for more time, I can wait as long as you choose."
"No, I might wish for time, if there was anything more. But if there's nothing else you have to tell me—then, no, I cannot marry you."
Langbourne rose, feeling justly punished, somehow, but bewildered as much as humbled, and stood stupidly unable to go. "I don't know what you could expect me to say after you've refused me—"
"Oh, I don't expect anything."
"But there is something I should like to tell you. I know that I behaved that night as if—as if I hadn't come to ask you—what I have; I don't blame you for not trusting me now. But it is no use to tell you what I intended if it is all over."
He looked down into his hat, and she said in a low voice, "I think I ought to know. Won't you—sit down?"
He sat down again. "Then I will tell you at the risk of—But there's nothing left to lose! You know how it is, when we think about a person or a place before we've seen them: we make some sort of picture of them, and expect them to be like it. I don't know how to say it; you do look more like what I thought than you did at first. I suppose I must seem a fool to say it; but I thought you were tall, and that you were—well!—rather masterful—"
"Like Juliet Bingham?" she suggested, with a gleam in the eye next him.
"Yes, like Juliet Bingham. It was your voice made me think—it was your voice that first made me want to see you, that made me write to you, in the beginning. I heard you talking that night in the hotel, where you left that circular; you were in the room next to mine; and I wanted to come right up here then; but I had to go back to New York, and so I wrote to you. When your letters came, I always seemed to hear you speaking in them."
"And when you saw me you were disappointed. I knew it."
"No; not disappointed—"
"Why not? My voice didn't go with my looks; it belonged to a tall, strong-willed girl."
"No," he protested. "As soon as I got away it was just as it always had been. I mean that your voice and your looks went together again."
"As soon as you got away?" the girl questioned.
"I mean—What do you care for it, anyway!" he cried, in self-scornful exasperation.
"I know," she said thoughtfully, "that my voice isn't like me; I'm not good enough for it. It ought to be Juliet Bingham's—"
"No, no!" he interrupted, with a sort of disgust that seemed not to displease her, "I can't imagine it!"
"But we can't any of us have everything, and she's got enough as it is. She's a head higher than I am, and she wants to have her way ten times as bad."
"I didn't mean that," Langbourne began. "I—but you must think me enough of a simpleton already."
"Oh, no, not near," she declared. "I'm a good deal of a simpleton myself at times."
"It doesn't matter," he said desperately; "I love you."
"Ah, that belongs to the time when you thought I looked differently."
"I don't want you to look differently. I—"
"You can't expect me to believe that now. It will take time for me to do that."
"I will give you time," he said, so simply that she smiled.
"If it was my voice you cared for I should have to live up to it, somehow, before you cared for me. I'm not certain that I ever could. And if I couldn't? You see, don't you?"
"I see that I was a fool to tell you what I have," he so far asserted himself. "But I thought I ought to be honest."
"Oh, you've been honest!" she said.
"You have a right to think that I am a flighty, romantic person," he resumed, "and I don't blame you. But if I could explain, it has been a very real experience to me. It was your nature that I cared for in your voice. I can't tell you just how it was; it seemed to me that unless I could hear it again, and always, my life would not be worth much. This was something deeper and better than I could make you understand. It wasn't merely a fancy; I do not want you to believe that."
"I don't know whether fancies are such very bad things. I've had some of my own," Barbara suggested.
He sat still with his hat between his hands, as if he could not find a chance of dismissing himself, and she remained looking down at her skirt where it tented itself over the toe of her shoe. The tall clock in the hall ticked second after second. It counted thirty of them at least before he spoke, after a preliminary noise in his throat.
"There is one thing I should like to ask: If you had cared for me, would you have been offended at my having thought you looked differently?"
She took time to consider this. "I might have been vexed, or hurt, I suppose, but I don't see how I could really have been offended."
"Then I understand," he began, in one of his inductive emotions; but she rose nervously, as if she could not sit still, and went to the piano. The Spanish song he had given her was lying open upon it, and she struck some of the chords absently, and then let her fingers rest on the keys.
"Miss Simpson," he said, coming stiffly forward, "I should like to hear you sing that song once more before I—Won't you sing it?"
"Why, yes," she said, and she slipped laterally into the piano-seat.
At the end of the first stanza he gave a long sigh, and then he was silent to the close.
As she sounded the last notes of the accompaniment Juliet Bingham burst into the room with somehow the effect to Langbourne of having lain in wait outside for that moment.
"Oh, I just knew it!" she shouted, running upon them. "I bet John anything! Oh, I'm so happy it's come out all right; and now I'm going to have the first—"
She lifted her arms as if to put them round his neck; he stood dazed, and Barbara rose from the piano-stool and confronted her with nothing less than horror in her face.
Juliet Bingham was beginning again, "Why, haven't you—"
"No!" cried Barbara. "I forgot all about what you said! I just happened to sing it because he asked me," and she ran from the room.
"Well, if I ever!" said Juliet Bingham, following her with astonished eyes. Then she turned to Langbourne. "It's perfectly ridiculous, and I don't see how I can ever explain it. I don't think Barbara has shown a great deal of tact," and Juliet Bingham was evidently prepared to make up the defect by a diplomacy which she enjoyed. "I don't know where to begin exactly; but you must certainly excuse my—manner, when I came in."
"Oh, certainly," said Langbourne in polite mystification.
"It was all through a misunderstanding that I don't think I was to blame for, to say the least; but I can't explain it without making Barbara appear perfectly—Mr. Langbourne, will you tell whether you are engaged?"
"No! Miss Simpson has declined my offer,"